Remembering Shadow

I met Shadow the first time I went to Elaine’s house as we started dating.  A barking dog of fifty pounds greeted me and it was clear she wanted to chase off this stranger to protect her mommy.  For the most part dogs and cats like me and I have various stories of how I was told their pet would stay away only to have them unexpectedly make an appearance and sometimes even quickly accept me.  But Shadow was a tougher nut to crack and I finally won her over by keeping a box of Iams doggy biscuits in my trunk and bringing her a treat every time I made an appearance at the front door.  She would grab the biscuit and quickly retreat to munch it in a few seconds.  The way to her heart was through her stomach.

Shadow demanded two daily walks and our routine was Elaine would walk her in the morning before work and I got the evening shift.  The normal route was a 0.7-mile loop from our house to Renwood to Hollendale to Rose Bower to Marshall and back to Larriwood.  It was a combination of her stopping over and over to smell whatever dogs like to smell and using all her strength to make us walk even faster.  This stop-and-go was a good workout for us also and on most walks, we enjoyed it as much as her, except when the temperature dipped below freezing or thoughtless neighbors would not shovel their sidewalks.  

Shadow did like the snow and she would come in after needing a backyard potty break with her black fur covered in white snow.  The exception to her love of snow was the year we got two-and-half feet in February along with freezing temperatures that kept that pile around for weeks.  The snow was deeper than her legs were long so I shoveled a path from the backyard patio to the back fence and then halfway down that fence.  She didn’t quite get what I had done, so I had to put her on her leash and pull her down the path to get her familiar with it.  After a week I felt sorry for her so I shoveled again to create a loop around the backyard.  Shadow walked to her previous stopping point then turned around and came back.  Again I had to put her on her leash and drag her around the entire loop to get her to understand.  I wasn’t going to waste all that extra effort for nothing.

Like all dogs, Shadow didn’t like rabbits, squirrels, or any critter invading her territory.  On one beautiful spring day, I discovered a rabbit nest in the backyard and found about eight babies, each about two inches long, and no mother in sight.  Shadow tried to get close enough to eat the babies, but I sternly told her no and she complied.  Each time she was left outside she would slowly circle the nest getting closer with each pass thinking she could get close enough before I could chase her off.  But I would let her see the babies and sniff around, always careful to keep her far enough away.  One day I laid on the grass on my back and put the babies on my chest so Shadow could get a closer look and smell for a few minutes and then returned them to the nest.  Baby rabbits grow incredibly fast and after about two weeks they decided it was time to leave the nest and take off on their own.  When Shadow saw them make a beeline for the back fence, she went crazy.  All her little friends were leaving her behind.  She went so far as to try to leap the back fence at its low point, getting painfully caught halfway over, and making me rescue her.  For several days after she would patrol the backyard looking for her buddies she had come to love.  The neighbors didn’t appreciate that we had more rabbits lurking about, but the hawks did.

Shadow’s morning walk during the workweek wasn’t a problem, but try sleeping in on the weekend and she would whine at the bedroom door.  It started low and infrequent, building and building until you couldn’t ignore her.  We always kept the bedroom shut and we figured out that the whining was partially due to her being closed out.  So we started keeping the door open a few inches so she could see us and that delayed her “I need to go outside now” shining for maybe another half-hour, granting us some well-deserved minutes of slumber.

Shadow’s nickname was “fence-jumper” and I’m told when she was young she was quite the escape artist, clearing fences at ease.  Elaine and her young sons, usually at the most inconvenient times, would drive around the neighborhood to fetch her back.  I never experienced the “fence jumper”, but on a snowy day, I found out how devious she could be.  I was shoveling the driveway and sidewalks and let Shadow join me, off leech, figuring I could keep an eye on her and stop her if she tried anything.  At one moment she was sniffing through a snow pile and the next she was gone.  Panic grew inside me that I would never be forgiven, particularly after I was warned, if she was gone for good.  We looked all over the neighborhood to no avail.  Then she came trotting up the sidewalk with what I swore was a big grin on her face, acting like she had done nothing wrong.

She did not like loud noises and between Elaine’s screaming at football games and my shouting “BOOM!” when my team hit a three-pointer, she wanted to get away.  Shadow would make a beeline for the door and demand she be let out.  She could bark as loud as she wanted, but the humans had a limit.

Shadow spent a lot of her final days in the basement.  In retrospect, she probably wanted to be alone with her illness and that’s how she dealt with it.  One day we found her at the bottom of the stairs having a seizure.  I carried her up the stairs knowing the end was near.  Not wanting her pain to linger, we had her put down.  The crying goes away, but are memories of her are forever.

The Best of 2024

This is the fourteenth year that I’ve collected dozens of the best experiences throughout the year.  2024’s list contained thirty-five entries and as usual, there were ones that were certain top tens and a bunch that contended for the last few inclusions.  Elaine and I made a record fourteen trips in 2024, some to see the grandkids, others to watch football, visit family, or even learn some history.  As I tell people, we put “tired” in the word “retired”!  We start with one of America’s most scenic locations.

10.  Niagara Falls

Elaine’s son Brian and his wife Deborah moved from Indianapolis to Buffalo when he accepted the Safeties & Nickels coaching job at the University at Buffalo.  We made our second trip to Buffalo in September to watch his team play the University of Massachusetts, which resulted in a 34-3 win for the Bulls.  The day before we spent an hour on Goat Island with Deborah to see the spectacular Niagara Falls.  There are three falls, the largest being Horseshoe Falls which dumps about 2.5 billion gallons of water over its crest per hour, far more than the smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls.  It was a beautiful sunny day and the rainbows created by the mists were huge and stunning.  Next time we won’t forget our rain ponchos.  

9.  Little Big Town Concert

One of the few big-name country bands we hadn’t seen over the years is Little Big Town, who have hits including “Day Drinking”, “Better Man”, “Pontoon”, “Little White Church”, and “Wine, Beer, Whiskey”.  We quickly grabbed floor seats with Elaine's sister and brother-in-law when we saw they were playing at PPG Paints Arena in November with opening acts by Sugarland and The Castellows.  Little Big Town is comprised of the husband-and-wife duo of Karen Fairchild and Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman, and Phillip Sweet.  We drove down early, had beers at PreGame, saw the concert, and ducked out a bit early to avoid the rush.

8.  Las Vegas Bowl

The Texas A&M Aggies went 8-4 during their football season making them bowl-eligible in the first year of Elaine’s son Pat as their Special Teams Coordinator.  That game was the Las Vegas Bowl on December 27 at Allegiant Stadium.  We flew out on Christmas Eve, had dinner at The House of Blues in the Mandalay Bay hotel, and spent Christmas morning watching our grandkids, Griffin and Joey, open their presents.  We walked the Strip every day, had a nice dinner at the Rí Rá Irish Pub, and watched the sharks, rays, turtles, and other creatures of the sea at the Shark Reef Aquarium.  The football ended on a sad note, a last-minute 35-31 loss to the USC Trojans.

7.  Main Street in Williamsville

Williamsville is the village just north of Buffalo that Brian and Deborah moved to.  From their apartment, you can walk up through Glen Park and along Ellicott Creek as it falls over the Onondaga Escarpment, forming the 27-foot-high Glen Falls, to reach Main Street.  We ate and drank at many places along a half-mile stretch including Glen Park Tavern, Britesmith Brewing Company, Moor Pat (Tap Room spelled backward), Creekview Restaurant, and The Irishman Pub & Eatery.  During our July trip, bands play at a dozen or more venues creating a festive atmosphere.

6.  Silent Disco

In February, we went on a 7-day Caribbean Cruise, with stops in Nassau, Bahamas, Cozumel, Mexico, and Georgetown, Grand Cayman.  The journey to Fort Lauderdale was nerve-racking as detailed in the blog “At Least We Made It”, but after that things calmed down, and while the weather was cooler and rainier than we hoped, we had a good time with family and friends.  We spent a fair amount of time in the middle of the ship in an area known as the Martini Bar and one evening we were introduced to a Silent Disco.  Each participant received a pair of noise-canceling headphones that could play one of three channels, each blasting a different genre of music.  Imagine hundreds of people singing at the top of their lungs, unable to hear each other, and dancing together.  Each channel selection used a different color, so you could meet and mingle with people who shared your taste in music.  It was a total blast!

5.  Bear Creek Golf Club

We took a 16-day road trip from mid-September through the first week of October, something we had never attempted before.  We called it the History and Beach Tour and some other highlights are below, but we’ll start with golfing on Hilton Head Island at the Bear Creek Golf Club.  There are a lot of golf courses in Hilton Head, and most are pretty pricey and very nice.  We found a moderately priced course for our first round, but it was far from nice.  Our next choice, Bear Creek, was affordable, well-kept, and a good challenge.  They had a good driving range with all the balls you wanted to hit.  The course had tall pine trees, plenty of bunkers, left and right dog-leg fairways, and intimidating water hazards.  It was nice that we brought our golf clubs from home and did not have to rent unfamiliar equipment.  Tough and beautiful is a great combination for golf and we enjoyed playing those nine holes.

4.  Salsa Making and Salsa Dancing

Our one booked excursion during the Caribbean Cruise was on the Mexican island of Cozumel.  We started with a bus ride to a Mexican market to buy tomatoes, limes, and other ingredients before heading to Playa Mia to make our homemade guacamole and pico de gallo, making them as spicy as we liked.  We learned a few moves of traditional Mexican salsa dance and sipped a variety of alcoholic drinks before heading back to the ship for another day at sea.

3.  Touring Monticello 

Monticello was Thomas Jefferson’s primary plantation, located a few miles southeast of Charlottesville, Virginia.  Jefferson designed it to look smaller than its 11,000 square feet spanning three floors and a cellar.  We opted for the Behind-The-Scenes Tour, a 90-minute adventure that includes exploring the upper floors that are accessed by very narrow, steep staircases, and the cellar which contains the kitchen, smokehouse, icehouse, wine and beer cellars, and other storage areas.  We passed the small cemetery on the walk up to the house and found the grave of Jefferson.  His mother Jane, his wife Martha, daughters Martha and Maria, and other family and close friends are also buried there.  To make our journey shorter the next day, we drove from Monticello to a hotel south of Richmond, Virginia for the night.  We traveled to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina the next day and had a delightful time there with Byran and Diane Lebovitz before heading to Hilton Head.

2.  Touring Gettysburg

Gettysburg has been a bucket list item for quite a while and we planned our 16-day History and Beach Tour around finally getting there.  We started with a two-hour Battlefield Bus Tour, visiting numerous fields, monuments, and ridges. The three-day Battle of Gettysburg was fought between Union and Confederate forces between July 1 and July 3, 1863.  We visited Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, and others. We learned how the battle unfolded and how the final day’s Pickett's Charge by the forces under General Robert E. Lee failed to break the Union lines at Cemetery Ridge, forcing them to retreat.  We toured the National Military Park Museum and an emotional late-afternoon walking tour of the National Cemetery where thousands of Union soldiers are buried.  

1.  The 38-23 Texas A&M win over LSU

We picked months in advance which Texas A&M football game would be our first at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, and it was the perfect choice.  We were among the 108,852 people who packed into the stadium to watch the 14th-ranked Aggies take on the 8th-ranked LSU Tigers.  Everything was first-rate, from parking in the coach's lot to entering through the Athletic Offices to the seats on the 47-yard line in the 17th row, the best I’ve ever had for this big a game.  LSU had a 17-7 half-time lead, but after the first series in the second half, the second-string quarterback, Marcel Reed took over the offense and he ran for three straight touchdowns giving the Aggies a lead they would never give up.  The place was so loud you had to scream in someone’s ear to be heard.   Final score: 38-23.